


The Last Mandala

by Magnanimator



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:10:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2323292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnanimator/pseuds/Magnanimator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relationships change after the events at the Northern Air Temple.</p><p>Most of the changes are good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First and Last Duet

The two of them stood on a balcony overlooking the gardens. The earliest stars began to whisper across the darkening sky, wherever the moon's glow was not too bright and the city's lights did not glare too fiercely from across the bay. 

A soft breeze sent hair drifting across their faces as they observed the scene below. 

“I haven't seen her this still since she was a baby.” Tonraq said, the moonlight brightening his worried eyes. 

Senna waited for him to catch his mistake. He was a good father, and so it would not take too long. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then slid her hand to cover his. 

“No,” he amended. “Not even then. I haven't seen her this still since before she was born.” 

Their daughter steered her wheelchair idly along between fountains and flowerbeds. Here or there, she would squeeze the handbrakes and draw to a stop, as if to contemplate something interesting that had caught her eye. Senna had gathered that this was what most people did when they visited a garden. 

Korra was not most people, and so her mother suspected that fountains and flowerbeds were not the things she contemplated. 

The breeze picked up, swirling along balconies and treetops and tousling the evening light, as a good breeze sometimes would. Senna felt her free hand drifting toward her belly. 

“No,” she murmured. “Not even then.”


	2. Around the Campfire

One of her father's old friends happened to own an island. On that island he maintained a menagerie of dangerous and exotic fauna so extensive that he had long since been forced to employ an extra secretary just to fend off the zoological inquiries. During childhood visits, she would sit at the edge of the aquarium, slippers dangling over the water, and watch the tiger-squid take their afternoon meal. Her mouth would twist and her eyelids would narrow, but she could never quite bear to look away as the lashing tentacles sent water and foam on lazy arcs across the drowsy sunset sky. 

Well. It was more of an old associate, she supposed. 

Anyway, that's how it was to watch Bolin with a bowl of noodles. The dish was transfixed by a flat predator stare. The chopsticks clacked restlessly. His neck and his entire torso flexed as he slurped the noodles down in powerful gulps. It was all very...fascinating, really. 

“It's because we grew up on the streets,” Bolin had confided, the first time he ever noticed her bemused stare. 

Asami had nodded politely then, and she nodded politely now. Factory horns across the bay signaled the cloud-flecked dawn. 

Mako sat nearby, shoulders straight and stern. He ate absentmindedly as he read the newspaper, chopsticks delivering the food unerringly to his mouth as his eyes remained intent on the page. Every noodle was precisely twisted to avoid slippage, and every movement was thoroughly without waste. Also fascinating, though in a somewhat less diverting manner. 

“It's because we grew up on the streets,” Mako had confided, the first time he ever noticed her bemused stare. 

She suspected there was nothing fascinating about the way she ate. Her tutors had been paid handsomely enough to ensure that it was so.

The three of them tried very hard to avoid looking at the exit to the western hallway. Which was terrifying, when Asami thought about it. People threw lightning bolts and icicles and boulders the size of houses at them what seemed like every day, yet she had never seen Mako or Bolin look quite so afraid as they had looked that afternoon at the Northern Temple, or every time they passed the room where their best friend lay. She could only imagine how frightened she herself would look if, years before, her father had not paid a succession of stern old society matrons to ensure that her expression would never deviate far from the sort of mild, attentive contentment that one might normally use to convey satisfaction with a cup of tea. A better cause to envy Mako than most, she supposed. 

Thinking about it was something Asami tried not to do. 

Senna appeared from within the kitchen, carrying a lacquered tray. The brothers instantly perked up, eyes softening and faces shifting into two differently-sculpted studies in kindly concern. Asami managed to inject some cheer into her own features. Perhaps it was true that none of them had a mother, but there were some things that came instinctively enough. 

“Could one of you run this over to Korra?” Senna asked. 

Mako and Bolin hesitated. Asami did too, but, it would seem, not quite as much. Her hands stretched out over the parquet floor and the tray slid into them. A tired smile ambled out from beneath a tangle of drooping bangs. 

Asami could have sworn that she had hesitated. But, it would seem, she hadn't. 

The tray was piled high with traditional Water Tribe food. Most people Asami knew used hushed voices when they called it that. Stewed sea prunes, gelled walrus-owl blubber, twists of camel-yak jerky stuffed with pickled kelp, and other...things. It smelled awful. It looked worse. It was easily the most important meal that would be prepared all day. 

Asami placed one boot on the floor of the western hallway and managed not to jump when it creaked.


End file.
